The Happiness Project

February 27, 2019

Do you journal? I always have the best intentions but that does not get me very far. I have grand dreams of leaving elloquent books filled with wisdom and insight on life. There would be pages full of funny stories, copies of family recipes and historic happenings of the day.

WAKE UP! My abridged version of this is the Happiness Project journal. It is a small 5 year journal with about 3 lines per day. Just enough to jot a sentence or two of gratitude, major family events, a quote that caught my eye or a few words of happiness.

I am on to my second 5 year journal and will be finishing it up in the year 2020. Between these journals and my hot mess of pictures stored on google my family can enjoy a zany look into my mind!

I wanted to share some of the tips from Gretchen Rubin as great reflection and daily inspiration. Enjoy!!

Twelve Personal Commandments

Be Gretchen.

Let it go.

Act the way I want to feel.

Do it now.

Be polite and be fair.

Enjoy the process.

Spend out.

Identify the problem.

Lighten up.

Do what ought to be done.

No calculation.

There is only love.

A Happiness Manifesto

To be happy, you need to consider feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

The days are long, but the years are short.

You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

Your body matters.

Happiness is other people.

Think about yourself so you can forget yourself.

“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.”—G. K. Chesterton

What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa.

Best is good, better is best.

Outer order contributes to inner calm.

Happiness comes not from having more, not from having less, but from wanting what you have.

You can choose what you do, but you can’t choose what you like to do.

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” —Robert Louis Stevenson